June 15^th (Friday)

           Today was fairly quiet at the hospital; ward rounds took longer than normal and it was like we were a crowd moving from patient to patient. We then assisted with three OGD’s (oesophago-gastro-duodenoscopy) after tea. Also, I should mention that while we were in the paediatric ward we noticed, actually JR noticed, that the mother of the patient with malaria also had a baby who was wearing a necklace. It was actually a charmer that the witch doctor charms to apparently protect the baby. The mother actually turned the necklace around to hide the little charm, hoping we wouldn’t notice. JR went and got scissors and cut it off from around the baby’s neck. Tiffany said that they would never willingly take it off and now the mother probably isn’t too happy with us as she will likely have to go to extra lengths to get another one. But the people know that the “white people” (at the hospital especially) don’t like the charms because it is a Christian hospital and the witch doctors perform dangerous procedures that will apparently “help”.

During the second OGD, Kayumbo said that the patient was doing very well, and I wanted to test out the words in Luvale I have been learning. So I said “chamwaza” which means very good and is like an encouragement/praise. Kayumbo was surprised and shocked as he looked at me. I pulled out my piece of paper from my pocket and told him I had written down some words and was practicing. He laughed and asked me who my teacher was, I said Tiffany and Joffrey taught us some words, mostly Luvale and some Lunda.

Later during the procedure there was a flurry of activity and you could tell one of the patients must be crashing. We heard it was the man from ICU, Isaiah, which unfortunately wasn’t too surprising as he didn’t look very well during rounds. Tiffany came into the theatre looking for something and Fiona and Nicole were just watching the OGD while I was the one assisting with the mouthguard, to hold it in place. They asked if Tiffany needed more hands and she said “sure, come along.” So Fiona and Nicole assisted with a few rounds of CPR on the man in the ICU. But the team was unsuccessful in the resuscitation. He had so much contamination inside of him (from the surgery I assisted with earlier in the week) that sepsis had set in and he had a very high fever, was tachycardic, and his BP had dropped dramatically. After that was over they return to see us finishing the last OGD (where we took biopsies of a tumour in the stomach.)

It was then lunchtime and we were invited to the Spiechineger’s house for a meal of naan, rice, and a delicious meat and bean mixture. Dr. Vincent and Dr. Lipsi were there, as well as Allison and Mel. We then went home and relaxed for the afternoon then went to the English meeting.

Afterwards we went home and saw we had a message inviting us back to the Spiechinger’s house for a girl’s movie night. We walked over admiring the African stars and we all decided to watch Kung-Fu Panda. There was the three of us, Mwansa, JR, Allison, Mel, Kate, Tiffany, and sometimes Joey (to do the set up). We ate some snacks then we returned home when the movie was over and tried to sing a few songs in Lunda and Luvale for the fun of it. Looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow!//